The Trust Shift: Why Audio Matters More in the Creator Era

Every year, Cannes produces a new headline about where marketing is going. Some years it’s purpose. Some years it’s performance. More recently, it’s been AI.

This year, though, one theme seemed to sit underneath almost every conversation: trust.

Not trust in platforms or automation, but trust in people.

That shift matters because it changes how brands should be thinking about media.

One of our biggest takeaways from Cannes this year is that the creator economy appears to be entering a different phase – one that feels less like influencer marketing and more like media building. And for anyone paying attention to audio, that transition feels especially important.

Creators Are Becoming Media

A recurring observation coming out of Cannes was that creators are increasingly being treated as strategic partners rather than simply channels for distribution, representing a meaningful shift.

For years, creator advertising was often evaluated through the mechanics of social media: reach, engagement, campaign windows and content output. The assumption was that creators helped brands borrow attention.

But brands increasingly want relationships that compound over time. They want recurring formats, recognizable voices and audiences that come back intentionally rather than discover content accidentally. In other words, they’re looking for the characteristics we’ve traditionally associated with media.

When creators move from campaign tactic to strategic channel, the questions change. The conversation becomes less about impressions and more about ownership, consistency, and audience trust.

In an AI World, Trust Becomes More Valuable 

Cannes didn’t ignore AI – if anything, it was impossible to avoid. But the tone felt different this year.

Rather than treating AI as a replacement for creativity, marketers seemed more interested in understanding where human advantage becomes more valuable as content production becomes easier and faster.

If content becomes abundant, attention doesn’t automatically follow. And if attention fragments further, trust becomes more valuable.

That creates an interesting opportunity for creator-led advertising. Not because creators are inherently more authentic, but because they operate inside environments where people have already chosen to spend time.

The implication isn’t that brands should abandon scale. It’s that scale without affinity is becoming less durable.

Why Audio Feels Increasingly Relevant

This is where we think audio deserves more attention.

Audio has always operated differently from most digital media. Listening tends to happen in moments of routine, focus, and habit. People return to voices repeatedly and build familiarity over time.

The strongest audio campaigns don’t feel like media inserted into content. They feel integrated into an existing relationship. Not invisible – audiences know they’re hearing advertising – but delivered in a context where attention and credibility already exist.

That dynamic becomes more important as marketers look for channels that can do more than generate exposure.

If creators are becoming media businesses, audio is one of the environments best designed to support that evolution.

The Opportunity Isn’t Attention. It’s Relationships.

One theme that surfaced repeatedly at Cannes was the growing pressure on marketing to become more efficient without becoming more interchangeable.

Budgets remain disciplined. Measurement expectations continue to rise. AI is lowering the cost of producing content at scale.

But none of those shifts solve the ongoing problem of creating communication people actually want to spend time with.

That tension showed up in a lot of conversations throughout the week. As content becomes easier to make and media becomes easier to buy, differentiation increasingly comes from something less scalable – connection.

That’s part of what makes the creator conversation feel more consequential than cyclical. The strongest creator partnerships aren’t generating value because they produce more assets. They create familiarity, affinity and repeat engagement over time.

And that’s also why audio feels increasingly important.

Audio has always rewarded consistency over interruption. It’s built around audiences who return, voices that become recognizable and formats that create habit. Those characteristics can feel old-fashioned in an industry obsessed with scale, but they may become more valuable in a market flooded with content.

If creators are becoming media, then the opportunity isn’t simply to sponsor them. It’s to build alongside them in environments where attention lasts longer and trust compounds.

That feels like a redefinition of what effective media looks like. And if that’s where the industry is heading, audio may be further ahead than most people think.